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CeeLo swears off social media

ATLANTA: The TV show The Voice isn't the only thing entertainer CeeLo Green is quitting. When we met up with him and his Goodie Mob posse recently, Green admitted that he's cut way back on his social media too,

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CeeLo swears off social media

Days before announcing that he won't be returning to 'The Voice' after four seasons, musician CeeLo Green sat down with USA TODAY's Jefferson Graham to talk tech, and told Graham that he has no time for FaceTime.
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Jefferson Graham, USA TODAY
10:24 a.m. EST February 26, 2014

Entertainer CeeLo Green has turned his back on social media. Interviewed at the ATVFest in Atlanta on the Savannah College of Art and design campus.(Photo: SCAD)

Story Highlights

ATLANTA — TV show The Voice isn't the only thing entertainer CeeLo Green is quitting. When we met up with him and his Goodie Mob posse, Green said that he's cut way back on social media, too, because of "the urge of saying something absurd" and the reaction that follows. We met up with Green and his old band mates at the recent Atlanta TV Festival here.

SOCIAL FALLOUT

Green saw the dark side of social media after he responded to a music critic's bad review with what many online felt was a homophobic slur. He apologized, after getting flamed from the Twitterverse. (He has nearly 4 million followers on Twitter and Facebook.) Contractually, to appear on The Voice he had to have an active Twitter account. Green announced last week that he wasn't returning to the NBC singing competition as a judge, to focus on other projects.

Social media is "a vehicle to promote ... a great means of doing so," he says. But he didn't like the reaction to some of his tweets. And after the social media brouhaha, he passed on the update chores to his publicist.

DEVICES

He travels with a BlackBerry and the iPhone 5. He has an iPad but says he rarely carries the tablet with him when he travels. "I can do whatever I need to do on the phone."

HEADPHONES

He swears by his Bose noise-canceling headphones. "I have four or five pairs …. They're really the best." He doesn't care as much for the popular Beats by Dr. Dre headphones "because they look trendy."

VIDEO CHAT

The other members of the Goodie Mob — whom he'll be featuring in a new reality series for TBS in June — love video chat, especially to keep in touch with loved ones via Apple's FaceTime when they filmed the show. But not Green. "Girls get spoiled by FaceTime. 'You want to FaceTime, babe?' No."

APPS

• Shazam (free; Apple, Android, Windows, BlackBerry) "is my favorite app of all time." With Shazam, you can find out the name of a song by opening the app and holding it to a speaker. "I'm into discovery, and it's the quickest, most efficient way to do so. You can be in a restaurant, hear something, and stumble onto something you'd never heard."

• Pandora. He doesn't like the paid music services like Spotify and Beats, but does use the free music service Pandora. His personalized station of choice features Prince, The Time and The Doors.